Alex St. Louis

Portfolio

Projects

Things I’ve designed, built and fixed, on the plant floor and at home.

Mechanical design · Production equipment

Automated powder transfer

At a powder-fill plant, the transfer system could only feed the filler at about 20% of its capacity. Powder bridging kept stopping the flow, the process was dusty, it took five operators, and the strip-curtain enclosure had to be wheeled out for washdowns.

I redesigned it around a sealed bulk bag unloader, an agitator in the hopper ahead of the infeed auger, better hopper geometry and a larger auger.

Results

  • 80% more output
  • One fewer operator
  • Dust exposure eliminated
  • No more enclosure washdowns

Controls · Fabrication · Single-board computer

Spray system flush station and test rig

At a coatings manufacturer, polyurea spray machines had to be flushed and tested by hand after every repair. I built a closed-loop flush station that keeps the A and B components separate and recirculates solvent, so two machines can be cleaned at once.

I also built a spray simulator on a custom-programmed single-board computer that runs post-repair tests hands-free, so technicians don’t have to stand over them.

Results

  • Over 66% less material
  • Over 50% fewer man-hours
  • More consistent diagnostics and faster repairs

3D printing · Firmware · Automation

Ender 3 Pro on Klipper

My Ender 3 Pro has a Creality 4.2.7 silent board, a Micro Swiss direct drive and a BLTouch, all installed myself. In August 2026 I moved it from Marlin to Klipper.

Prints now run through a pipeline: I drop a model in a folder, it gets sliced automatically, and I approve the job from my phone before it prints.

Setup

  • Klipper firmware with BLTouch bed mesh
  • Automatic slicing with approval from my phone
  • Next up: input shaping and pressure advance tuning

Electronics · RF

FPV drone build

An FPV quad built around the iFlight XL5 V5.1, set up with an ExpressLRS 2.4 GHz radio link.

It pulls together soldering, radio setup and flight controller configuration in one small machine.

Setup

  • iFlight XL5 V5.1
  • ExpressLRS 2.4 GHz control link

Infrastructure · Self-hosted software

Homelab and AI agents

My homelab is where I learn by building: a Proxmox hypervisor with VMs and Docker services on UniFi networking, Home Assistant for the house, and ESP32 controllers I built for lights and appliances.

It also runs a fleet of self-hosted AI agents, each with its own role and tools, handling scheduling, research, automation and system monitoring.

Stack

  • Proxmox, Docker and UniFi
  • Home Assistant with custom ESP32 devices
  • Self-hosted AI agents with per-agent tool access

Full-stack software

Garden planner app

A web app I built to plan my garden: a 24 by 8 foot drag-and-drop bed grid with companion planting, a timeline for each crop, and a plant library I can edit.

Stack

  • React (Vite) front end
  • FastAPI and SQLite back end
  • Runs in Docker on my homelab